


Freedom

by Jadedphase



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Jasper is mentioned too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 17:57:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1787917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadedphase/pseuds/Jadedphase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Octavia wishes she knew where she belonged, Monty wishes he could make her see that she's more than the connections she keeps chasing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freedom

She was angry, full of rage and carried with the grace of her steps as she paced to and fro in her own little dance of gathering strength. She was the hurricane on the horizon and Monty knew there's no real point in bracing for the storm when it will swell larger than can be avoided, he could only hope that the damage would be minimal. 

From where he was seated he watched her fold and unfold on herself, unable to decide if she needed to guard or to explode outward to release that vexation. There would be no slow burn that time, it would be a malstrom. No doubt it had been building to the crest for some time, her eyes flashed lighting and her lips had drawn into a tight line.

"He doesn't have the right to tell me who I can be with or not," Octavia's voice tense and weak in the same ragged breath because her heart was fragile and breaking under the pressure but too stubborn the accept the shatter after she had thought she had only, finally, managed to stitch it back together. 

He wasn't sure how to patch it back together, not yet, so he only nodded and gave her the room to continue her stormy weather; maybe that was the way she would clear away the debris to find some peace inside; some days that was all he found himself hopeful for when he wondered if she might demand too much of her own emotions.

She darts, light as air on her nervous feet, "I can't believe him! Just because he's my brother he thinks he can lock me back up? Doesn't he see he's not any different than they were on the Ark?"

The small space of the dropship cannot contain her fury but it does shelter it; too raw for the world outside the steel walls and too private to share with the onlookers who still only offered her curious glances around the camp. Because she was not Octavia the person, she was Octavia the sister to Bellamy and that made her nearly an alien presence for all the distance her brother longed to build around her to keep her safe.

"I'm dying," she finally collapsed to sit on the cold steel, instantly wishing she had chosen better words while Jasper breathes heavy and uneven only feet away from the corner she tried to curl herself into. 

"No," Monty speaks softly to her while he lifted the cloth to wipe away the sweat from Jasper's fevered brow, "I think you're just finally figuring out how to live."

 

The lessons are difficult ones, they all stumble now and then, in gain and loss they began to see in each other the people they need to become. Each day a new challenge, Monty worked to build the foundation the camp needs to survive while he watched Octavia struggle to find the connections she needs to build herself. 

And they see each other in passing, crossed paths now and then with smiles and reassuring words; he climbed upward and she spiraled out of control.  
But when she fell to her knees now and then and he pulled her back to her feet, urged her into the next steps, the same as he did all the people he calls by the title of friend. 

There is something special about her though; maybe it is because she reaches for his hand rather than wait for him to offer it, maybe she saw him as more than a fixture in the background or the counterpart of Jasper's presence, or maybe it's simply because they are not so different in what they were seeking in the world even if the way they search is all their own.

She came to him with friendship and he took that like it was a treasure, a rare jewel that he tucks away in some place in his heart; he does not forsake her like so many others had and he did not judge her for the way she clung to any connection that helped her feel as though life was worth living.

That is the burden of a true friend, the true friend that she never knew she needed until he was there with a calming smile and silly humor to lift her rattled spirits when she began to feel too much like a ghost in the walls again.

She came to him with more and he took her hands, smiled, and urged her towards the others who carried their devotion for her in their eyes. And she wasn't sure if it was loyalty to Jasper that kept him distant or something else he guarded as a secret of his own, but each time he told her that there is more out there for her it ached a little deeper in the pit of her stomach. 

 

But caught up in the rush, time became a fickle thing on fluttering wings, it would not stop nor would it be kind; so easy for it to slip away without much notice. They all become guilty of letting it slide out of their grasp, guilty of losing each other. 

So she sought him again in a moment that left her tired of the boastful nature of the lives they have settled into; words in the firelight that leave her ill and she had to turn away from where the crowd gathered to listen to the crowing of their newest hero.

When she found Monty and asked how he could stand it he only laughed and shrugged it away, it's something in the nature of friendship that he understands that she cannot wrap her hands around.

"You can listen to him talk like that, even knowing he may as well be lying through his teeth," she accused with her lips drawn back in a deadly frown, "Knowing he may as well have just started a war."

"That war had already started," he countered with the same quiet resolution that his words often were built upon, and Octavia for once found them more frustrating than comforting. 

She vibrated in the spot where she stood, anger and fear tied up inside her and threatening to bust forth at any instant. Monty only drew a measured breath and braced himself once again, fingertips brushed over the wall to keep himself grounded. 

"So it's fine for him to boast about killing people? How can you, of anybody, forgive that?"

"How do you forgive anything?" he mused, "You remember why they deserve to be forgiven."

"And that works?" Octavia challenged as she drew herself up more, arms wrapped all around herself at the thought of where the path Bellamy and Jasper were heading down would lead them all. 

"If you let it." 

 

Monty knew more about forgiveness than people gave him credit for, more about a great deal in fact, but mostly he knew what it took to accept that nobody was perfect.  
And that was the one thing about him that gave Octavia the most hope; she only wished he had known how to be a leader. 

She reached for his hands and he took her's, that same smile upon his lips for the instant before she drew closer and covered them with her own in a kiss both soft and fleeting.  
He didn't push her away, he gave them both that much and then finally drew back, fingers still laced up lightly with her own.

Octavia knew he would give her that kind-hearted nudge away again too soon, as surely as she knew before the night was over she would be searching the dark for the stark white of a single flower tucked into some safe corner of the night she was bound to spot. 

They were not the people they always wished to be, but they were truer to themselves by being who they discovered under their own skin along the way to reaching that point.

"You know what I can't understand?" She voiced it with a hint of sadness that bled through the corner of her eyes in dampness she tried her best to hide and he tried his best to ignore for the sake of her pride. "I've been a lot of things, some good and some bad, that you've always accepted more than anyone should."

Monty may have answered but she cut him off with the shake of her head and the squeeze of her hands more tightly in his. 

"I've been a lot of things, but never yours."

Her hands slipped away with the words and he let them go free, let her steps leave him alone and watching her shadow stretch out in the firelight until the night swallowed it up. 

Monty could never bear to hold her captive the way she thought she needed someone to, no more than he could manage to help her see that if it was freedom she truly longed for she had to stop building cages for herself.


End file.
